Earth & Environment

Topic Image Rail

START FROM SCRATCH The asteroid that hit Earth about 66 million years ago, wiping out most of the planet’s life, also spewed carbon dioxide into the air and heated up the climate for millennia, a new study suggests.

muratart/iStockphoto

FACING THE FUTURE White pipes in a Japanese rice paddy are designed to release extra CO2, creating a little patch of simulated future atmospheres to see how that affects crop nutrients.

Toshihiro Hasegawa/National Agriculture and Food Research Organization of Japan

BUG LOSS Insects, including honeybees (shown), would see their geographic ranges shrink the most under higher future warming scenarios.